EMOTIONAL BRANDING

Emotion is a significantly
powerful force for business. A brand is not a logo, website or just business
cards,it’s an experience. A brand is worthless if it doesn’t connect with the
right audience in the relevant way.

Humans are emotional creatures
and they connect at deeper levels. In a buying situation, most customers
un-subconsciously act emotionally and prefer brands that they connected with. Emotional
branding exploits this fact, and tries to create a feeling of bonding,
companionship and a sense of connection between the brand and the customer. It
creates a personality for the brand. Emotional branding precisely aims at
connecting to consumer’s needs and aspirations by triggering an emotional
response. This helps create a strong bonding between the brand and the
consumer, and can drive customer loyalty to new highs.

Connecting to customers on the
emotional level begins with the brand defining its core values. The brand need
not define the technical aspects; instead they define what ideals company
represents and stands for. Next, the businesses need to clearly recognize what
kind of customers they are engaging with and what feature is it that they want
the customers to relate to on the personal level. Once a clear idea is
achieved, and the essential attributes are defined, one can move towards
deciding the strategy to implement the given requirements. However, one should
be careful in the difference between the concept of marketing and emotional
branding. Emotional branding goes much beyond marketing, in the sense that
marketing evokes the human emotions and help them connect, but emotional
branding makes sure the employees stand up to the brand’s identities and
attributes and help the customers connect.

Consider the banking sector as an
example. Banks have tried to connect to the customers through their
advertisements and create a sense of security and bonding between the bank and
its customers. Taking the example of ICICI bank, and observing its
advertisements over the years representing different products, we realize that
they have exploited the small-small intricacies of everyday life to connect to
its customers. Take the example of the advertisement of ICICI Life Insurance,
with the tagline “Bande Achche Hain…Jo zimmedari nibhate hain, jatate nahi”. It
shows small instances where people do good for each other in daily life,
without ever mentioning it. I believe, each one of us could connect to the ad
as we all have that sense of goodness in our hearts. We care for people we
love, and we sacrifice without ever needing credit for the same. ICICI bank
evokes the emotion that each one of us wishes our loved ones be always
protected and hence, we should choose ICICI bank insurance to ensure that
always happens. Various other ads from ICICI bank which exploit the basic human
need of emotional connect include, “Choti Choti baatein choti nahin hoti”,
“Achcha Lagta hai jab humme koi vishwaas jagata hai”, “Har kadam pe hum apke
sath hain”, “Ap 60 ke ho ya 70 ke, apka kal aj se behtar hona chahiye”, “Hum
Hain Na” and many more similar ads who all together try to convey that ICICI
bank cares for people and understands their needs. It shows the human side of
the bank. It tries to convey bank as an entity with a heart and soul who is
here to connect with you and protect you from the negative realities by being
by your side. Humanization bridges the gap between the customers and the banks
on the emotional level. Hence, we see that emotional branding creates a
long-lasting impact and is a very powerful tool to connect businesses with
customers if used in the right way.